How to teach work-ready skills

It is often assumed that work-ready and transferable skills are developed automatically or 'by osmosis' during a course.

Even if this was true, are students and academics overtly aware of these skills and are they comprehensively or consistently curated and nurtured enough to be effective?

Students need to be aware of the importance and value of the competencies and their potential impact on immediate career prospects. They need to see them delivered explicitly as part of their curriculum.
 
The skills, behaviours and knowledge need to be built into a course structure throughout a student’s academic journey (rather than left until a placement or final year) for them to develop to a sufficiently good standard for future employers.

These can be developed steadily from Year 12 through to graduation, and can build on primary and secondary school transferable skill initiatives, such as Skills Builder, LifeSkills, or Pearson’s Future Ready Framework.
 
The work-ready (WRYSE) competencies might be taught in each course by a range of people – from course leaders and lecturers, to technicians and employability support teams. Listing them explicitly will help give emphasis and structure to how they are delivered to students. It also encourages educators to review their own established patterns of teaching which may not include effectively deliver these competencies.
 
It is important for employers and industry to build awareness of the WRYSE competencies, both as a framework and resource for educators to demonstrate that they develop valuable work-ready skills, and also as a framework employers can use internally to support work placements, recruitment activity and induction training for new entrants 

Building competencies into courses

There are four points where the competencies can be built into a vocational or degree course:

• Learning outcomes
• Curriculum model
• Ongoing evidence
• Final assessment

Some elements of course structure and design are easier and quicker to adapt than others. It is often impossible to change some aspects (such as learning outcomes or final assessment) until a course is newly validated or reapproved.

Further education courses for 16 to 18-year-olds built on qualifications such as Level 3 BTECs, T levels or UAL Diplomas are more flexible however. Schemes of work tend to be reviewed annually and portfolio-based assessments make it simpler to incorporate changes.

These guidelines identify ways that course leaders can build the competencies into course structures as quickly as possible, rather than waiting for a full course re-design ahead of a full revalidation process.

This not only means students can immediately start to increase their focus on developing these work-ready skills and experiences, but also allows educators to start to test different ways to deliver, evidence and assess these competencies.

Learning outcomes

The broadest level at which the competencies can be incorporated into a course structure is in the learning outcomes for a particular module or the overall programme.

Learning outcomes for degree courses are likely to be set during (re)validation, and deliberately worded to be generic and flexible enough to accommodate ongoing changes in curriculum and assessment models before the validation cycle is complete.

This means there might be limited opportunities to refer to the WRYSE competencies in learning outcomes. However, there are some things that you can do:

• Explicitly refer to developing work-ready skills and experiences in modules that cover professional practice or employability. Name-check the WRYSE framework so that it gains wider recognition and currency.
• Use the one-line summary that describes a competency in the learning outcome for modules that focus specifically on work-ready skills and experiences (e.g. health and safety).
• Where there is a more detailed module description underneath the learning outcome, the WRYSE competencies can be referred to as an overall group, or with specific headings such as transferable skills, industry awareness and technical skills.
• Incorporating the competencies into schemes of work for Level 3 courses shows that these transferable and work-ready skills are equally as important as the criteria set by the awarding organisation. They are  also likely to be more directly influential in progression into work and possibly also higher education.

Examples of curriculum models

There are several ways that the competencies can be built into the central teaching curriculum of a vocational or degree course.

The approaches set out below have different advantages and disadvantages and some can be  combined.

All the approaches have the following in common:

• Lecturers and trainers can start teaching and developing the WRYSE skills, knowledge and experience from the very first term, highlighting them as some of the key outcomes of the course overall in terms of future employability. Students need to understand as soon as possible that creativity and technical flair alone will not secure them a job in the competitive screen industries market.
• Courses can heavily incentivise the development and demonstration of WRYSE competencies within their credit structure. They can use the guidelines to help students complete relevant sections of the course by evidencing specific training on the work-ready skills and experiences identified.

Students who are attracted to further and higher education by the prospect of learning about theory, creativity or specific technical skills may not be as interested in, motivated by or aware of the importance of developing broader transferable skills and industry awareness.

The WRYSE competencies should be incorporated clearly into course information and university recruitment processes, so students are fully aware of this part of the curriculum before they begin their academic career.